French indicative planning, and planning for socialism in the 21st century

• In Event: Planificación, mercado y desarrollo en Cuba: proyecciones actuales.

Abstract

While one must always be careful not to oversimplify and argue all planning for socialism in the 20th century was alike, it is safe to say that the core of socialist planning then was “mandatory planning” involving quantitative output requirements (with various decisively secondary roles for financial considerations). See any classic book on this, e.g. Socialist Planning by Michael Ellman. Countries such as Cuba and arguably Venezuela that have declared commitments to (continue) to work to build socialism in the 21st century (necessarily) are developing new systems of planning. A central characteristic that is already apparent in these still developing planning systems is there will be a reversal such that financial controls will play the primary role while quantitative controls, while not necessarily being entirely eliminated, will be reduced to a decidedly secondary role. The purpose of this paper is to consider what lessons for planning for socialism in the 21st century might be drawn from what we would argue was an extended and successful planning experience in the 20th century that did have financial control as central, French Indicative Planning. We stress there can be no thought of copying that experience since it had at its core a different goal, the restoration of a healthy capitalism (after WWII). Nevertheless, we argue that a number of interesting and rich practices and procedures developed for that planning that could well serve the necessary new socialist planning for the 21st century.

Authors

• Al Campbell, University of Utah

• Nicolas J Pons-Vignon, SEBS, University of the Witwatersrand